Chapter 632 - 295: Symbiote

"You’re committing suicide."

Leo was stunned.

"Why? Isn’t this the most effective method? Haven’t you always taught me to be a pragmatist?"

"This is a mechanistic pragmatism. It’s a dead end."

Roosevelt’s voice grew heavy.

"Do you think an organization is a set of building blocks? Do you think capital is a Lego set you can assemble and disassemble as you please?"

"You’ve made a fatal cognitive error."

"This is a classic instrumentalist view. You think capital is just a ladder you can use to climb a wall, and then kick it away once you’re at the top."

"But that’s not how reality works."

"The moment you introduce capital into your system, the moment you allow them into your decision-making circles for the sake of efficiency..."

"That ladder will begin to grow."

"It will grow blood vessels, nerves, and bones."

"It will pierce your skin, burrow into your flesh, become your skeleton, and finally, become a part of your body."

Leo frowned. "I have executive power. I have the law. If I just give the order..."

"You won’t be able to give the order."

Roosevelt cut him off.

"Listen, Leo. Let’s look at what will happen if you do this."

"You say you want to give contracts to construction companies to help you build. For efficiency’s sake, you’ll inevitably let them participate in the planning and allow them to set the standards."

"In this process, your administrative officials—Ethan, Marcus, even the new department heads you’ve promoted—they’ll be dealing with these capitalists every single day."

"They’ll dine together, hold meetings together, and create regulations together."

"Slowly, a bond of personal relationships and mutual interests will form."

"This is the so-called ’revolving door.’"

Roosevelt’s voice was filled with conviction.

’If I do this boss a small favor,’ your officials will start thinking, ’I can go work for his company as a consultant for ten times my current salary when I retire or resign.’

"Once that thought takes root, your executive orders will be distorted."

"You think you’re using capital, but in reality, capital is assimilating your team."

"When you want to cut them out, you’ll find you’re not cutting out outsiders, but your own subordinates—your own right-hand men."

"And that’s just the corruption at the bureaucratic level."

Roosevelt continued, his tone even more grim.

"What’s more terrifying is the masses."

"You say you want to use capital to create jobs. Fine. The factories are built, the hospitals are built, the workers have jobs and are getting paid."

"They are grateful to you."

"But when you try to kick these capitalists out..."

"What will the capitalists do?"

"They only need to do one thing."

"Shut down operations."

"Pull their investments."

"Or even just intentionally delay payroll by a couple of days."

Roosevelt painted a terrifying picture.

"When that time comes, factories will grind to a halt, logistics will be disrupted, and hospitals will close their doors."

"The very workers who supported you will be the first to stand up against you."

"Because they need to eat, to support their families, to pay their mortgages."

"They’ll think you’re the one who’s gone crazy, that you’re destroying their lives for your own personal ambition."

"Capital will turn the masses into their human shields."

"You want to plunge a knife into the heart of capital, but that knife will cut the flesh of the masses first."

"At that point, you won’t be facing a few lobbyists from the lobbying groups, but the very people you organized yourself."

Leo felt a chill crawl up his spine.

He remembered the faces of the workers in Pittsburgh.

They were loyal, but they were also fragile.

If Leo’s decisions threatened their survival, that loyalty would instantly turn to hatred.

"When you choose a path, you choose all the scenery along that path, and you also choose all its traps,"

Roosevelt said.

"Once a symbiotic relationship is formed, it is nearly impossible to break apart."

"Just like me and the military-industrial complex."

There was a trace of world-weariness in Roosevelt’s voice.

"During World War II, I faced the same dilemma you do. I needed tanks, I needed planes, I needed to defeat the most evil enemy on the planet."

"So I compromised."

"I established the Democratic Arsenal. I gave giants like General Motors, Boeing, and Dupont unprecedented power."

"I spread military production sites across every congressional district in the country, letting every member of Congress get a taste of the sweet profits from military spending."

"I succeeded."

"We won the war and saved civilization."

"But..."

Roosevelt sighed.

"The war ended, but that monster never disappeared."

"It grew up."

"It infiltrated the Pentagon, it infiltrated Congress, it infiltrated university laboratories."

"It became a vast, self-proliferating interest group."

"Eisenhower warned the country about it in his farewell address, to be wary of the military-industrial complex."

"But he was powerless to stop it."

"Because our main arteries—tax revenue, employment, technological research and development—are now fused with it."

"To cut it out would be to cut out the heart of the United States."

Leo stood silently in front of the whiteboard.

"If you go down this path, then what is the point of me being here? You’ll just be swapping one group of people for another. Would the country have fundamentally changed at all?"

"Then what should I do?"

Leo’s voice was low.

"Are you saying I can’t use the power of capital? Then how am I supposed to close the three-vote gap?"

"Was my whole idea wrong?"

"The direction is right."

Roosevelt admitted, "You want to replicate what I did back then, to win over those stubborn members of Congress with jobs and tax revenue. In that broad sense, you’re not wrong."

"Wanting to use the greed of capital to drive construction is also not wrong."

"What’s wrong is your naive idea that you can just discard them when you’re done."

"You can’t just plan to use them and then kick them to the curb, because you won’t be able to."

"You have to change your way of thinking."

"What way of thinking?" Leo pressed.

Roosevelt didn’t answer directly.

"Leo, do you know why the military-industrial complex, for all its power, never managed to turn the United States into a militaristic state?"

"Why is it that even though it holds policy hostage, the government still has the final say?"

"Because we put a rope around that monster’s neck."

"This rope is invisible and intangible, but it’s more effective than any law."

Leo thought for a moment.

"The budget?"

"No."

"Votes?"

"Not entirely."

Roosevelt gave him the answer.

"Structure."

"A structure that forces capital to depend on executive power for its very survival."

"Your current idea is to give them contracts and let them make money."

"That’s too rudimentary."

"What you need to do isn’t to give them meat to eat."

"It’s to control their stomachs."

Roosevelt’s voice became distant, as if echoing from afar.

"Those Senators in Harrisburg, why do they oppose you? Because they have financial backers."

"The health insurance companies."

"You want to bring in new capital to fight them, like from the energy or construction sectors."

"But that will just turn into two packs of dogs fighting each other, and they’ll end up trashing the whole house."

"What you need to do is redefine ’interest’."

"Those Senators, do they really care about their backers’ money?"

"No."

"They care about reelection, about power, about the security of their position."

"The backers’ money is to help them get reelected."

"But what if you could give them the capital for their campaigns directly?"

"So, there’s much more you can give them..."